Bush's intelligence chief plan could lead to abuses, say critics

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Members of the September 11, 2001 commission joined congressional Democrats on Tuesday to criticise President George Bush's proposal to create the post of national intelligence director, saying the plan would not give the position nearly enough power.

Top intelligence officials and civil libertarians, however, have warned against creating the powerful new position at all, saying it would be unmanageable and could lead to infringements of personal liberties.

The commission's criticism came a day after Mr Bush announced the proposal in response to its final report, which produced conciliatory statements from the White House, suggesting that Mr Bush was open to negotiation with Congress over far broader powers for the new position.

"The national intelligence director will have the authority he or she needs to do this job," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said.

In tones that reflected how politically charged the debate over the report has become, House and Senate Democrats said the President's proposal did not go nearly far enough in meeting the commission's concerns about the need for central co-ordination of intelligence agencies.

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The bipartisan commission said the position was necessary to end turf battles and duplication among intelligence agencies.

But though Mr Bush agreed on Monday to create such a post, he rejected the commission's recommendation that the national intelligence director have direct control over the $US40 billion ($57 billion) annual intelligence budget, and veto power over the people named to head intelligence agencies. Under the White House proposal, the intelligence director would have far more limited budgetary and personnel authority.

Intelligence officials are particularly opposed to the commission's plan to have the 15 intelligence agencies remain in their current departments answering both to their secretaries and, simultaneously, to a new intelligence chief who would control their budgets.

Voicing concern that a two-boss arrangement would be unwieldy, John Brennan, director of the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Centre, urged the Senate committee not to move too quickly lest it do more harm than good. He said the September 11 recommendations were not workable.

A new US Civil Liberties Union report also criticised the proposal, saying that having one person in charge of domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering could result in the greater use of espionage against US citizens on American soil.